Biden’s Cloud Over 9/11

We didn’t want to talk about it on the day itself, but what a cloud President Biden managed to cast over the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

He’d clearly intended his Afghan pullout to allow a triumphant speech on the anniversary. But he was so determined to make political hay from ending America’s longest war as the country commemorated the attack that sparked it that he instead wrought a national humiliation.

Notably, Biden extended the exit deadline — right into the combat season, allowing the Taliban to plan an offensive that made it look like they were driving America into retreat. Then, as the Afghan army collapsed, deprived of air support and its morale shredded by events like the middle-of-the-night US abandonment of Bagram Air Base, he stubbornly stuck to his self-imposed deadline even after it became clear it’d mean abandoning Americans and allies.

His debacle leaves the Taliban far stronger than on Sept. 11, 2001, raising the risk of terrorism worldwide from al Qaeda and like-minded groups.

The Taliban established their Islamic emirate in 1996 but never had complete control of the country: The US special forces that helped topple them relied on resistance fighters from the north. But this year’s resistance faced a force enriched by the vast stateof-the-art US arsenal abandoned in the Biden-ordered retreat: thousands of armored vehicles and dozens of aircraft seized from the Afghan army. The United States delivered seven new helicopters alone in July, just a month before the Taliban takeover.

In the rush to evacuate, America even left biometric data on millions of Afghans, making it all too easy for the Taliban to identify — and slaughter or torture — their enemies, those who risked their lives working alongside coalition forces over the 20-year war.

Team Biden keeps claiming the Taliban have reason to be better as they seek international legitimacy for their new regime. Hah! The interim leaders are the same old monsters: As Foundation for Defense of Democracies fellow Thomas Joscelyn notes, “More than a dozen of them were first sanctioned by the UN Security Council in early 2001.”

And plenty have ties to al Qaeda. The new interior minister is Sirajuddin Haqqani, who’s on the FBI’s most-wanted list with a multimillion-dollar bounty as leader of the brutal, al Qaeda-tied Haqqani network, known for its mass-beheading videos — as well as the 2011 siege of Kabul’s US Embassy compound that resulted in 16 dead Afghans.

Biden declared al Qaeda all but dead — though the Treasury Department noted as he took office that it has been “gaining strength in Afghanistan while continuing to operate with the Taliban under the Taliban’s protection.” In June, the UN Security Council reported that al Qaeda is active in at least 15 of the country’s 34 provinces.

It’s not the only Islamic terrorist outfit the Taliban support. Biden keeps noting that ISIS-K, which killed 13 US service members and hundreds of Afghans last month, is the Taliban’s sworn enemy. But the truth is far more complex. As security expert Sajjan Gohel wrote in Foreign Policy, “There has, in fact, been a tactical and strategic convergence between the Islamic State-Khorasan and the Haqqanis, if not the entirety of the Taliban.”

Biden had to scrap his planned “I ended the war” speech for the 9/11 anniversary. Instead, he led into the solemn day with a different bid to claim leadership — on COVID. All early signs suggest that ploy won’t work out any better.

The nation needs its president to stop playing politics with vital decisions, and start actually leading.